Never Had A Brother
by sweetprincipale
Summary: A stand alone that could be seen as a companion piece to Worth It, featuring close friendship with family bonds. Eliot has known two kinds of touch in the last decade- exchange of blows or carnal pleasures. The only rare exchanges he has had that could be termed affectionate are with his team. He's still not used to it.


**Never Had a Brother **

_ A stand alone that could be seen as a companion piece to Worth It, featuring close friendship with family bonds. Eliot has known two kinds of touch in the last decade- exchange of blows or carnal pleasures. The only rare exchanges he has had that could be termed affectionate are with his team. He's still not used to it. _

"Eliot! _Eliot_! Answer me! Dammit!" Hardison's voice is frantic, and rising up the octave every millisecond the hitter is silent. "Parker!" If Parker doesn't answer, he thinks his heart will explode.

"I can see him." Parker's voice is tight, but earns his relieved sigh. "You need to run interference, the east entrance. Hardison, now, before they-" She's abseiling as fast as she can, like a long, tall, black and blonde spider unfurling its web. She sees the loading dock and the three men that their teammate just faced, and sees that their next move is to put him in the back of the white box truck.

"I'm already on it, Mama." Hardison's hands are flying, as fast as she slides down, he tears across keys until klaxons are blaring at the east entrance of the building they've just exited, and the building across from it, behind it, and beside it. People are pouring out, and their adversaries exchange a panicked look and split, trying to leave before they're seen.

"They're scattering. They're leaving the truck!" Parker cries in relief, feet touching down, already unhooking, leaving the rig dangling, to hell with the expensive, custom harness when Eliot's on the ground, not answering, not even grunting in pain.

Parker on foot reaches Eliot first, keeping silent, lips white, ignoring Hardison's steady stream of tense babbling, prayers, and threats. She can't speak until her fingers find the pulse on the face-down protector, hand slipping under his neck. "Alive!" she bursts, smiling broadly for a second, before she starts calling his name, trying to determine if it's safe to turn him over.

"Thank you, Jesus!" Hardison's babble turns joyful, loud enough for her to hear over the squeal of Lucille VII's tires. "Yeah! That's our boy! Skull like granite. Gran-_ite_."

"Shuuu." Eliot twitches and moans faintly.

"He said something!" Hardison shouts.

"Ow!" Eliot comes to, and the first thing he wants to do is swat at his earbud, where his teammate's joyful exclamations hurt like hell.

"He was saying shush." Parker is trying to be all business, to keep her hands from shaking. "Turn off the alarms?"

"On it." The van halts, Hardison stumbles out, tablet in hand as he silences the distractions he just made, and then he practically tosses it away, to hell with the one of a kind tablet that he's almost trained to combat a Steranko and modeled on the NSA "spy-truck" programs. He can probably build another one. And if he can't- well, Eliot's beat a Steranko, too, and the man is one of a kind. One grumpy, sarcastic, technologically backward hero that Hardison can't live without. "He can shush me his own damn self when he wakes up. Scaring me like that!"

"Dammit, Hardison." A weak murmur from a bloodied mouth. Eliot lets himself be gently turned and looks onto two of the most worried faces he's ever seen. He can't help but recall the image of Hardison emerging from a coffin, rescued before suffocation, and his own tense admonition for the Hacker not to scare him like that again. "I'm okay," Eliot lies, but the grouchiness is temporarily gone from his voice. "Let's go."

"If you have a concussion, you need to be still for a little bit." Parker forgets her usual mantra of "police come, thieves go" as the law starts to arrive, no doubt summoned by Hardison's cacophony.

"I don't do- oh." No one mentioned hospitals. "Shit…"

"We'll move. Gently." Hardison suggests. "But- fast, y'all. All we need is the police seein' me pulling a little bloody dude into the back of a big ass black van. I am too pretty for prison."

Eliot snorts, laughing hurts. Ribs are busted. Teeth would be missing, but Hardison has finally, finally, _finally_ talked him into slipping a custom Invisalign mouth guard into his wardrobe before they go on jobs. He managed to put it in before things got too rough. His gums are bloody, they'll bruise like hell, but his teeth are still attached. He'll be grateful.

After he naps.

* * *

The loft above the brewpub is no longer just headquarters. It's Parker and Hardison's home. Eliot has the apartment on the floor above the pub, closer to the kitchen. The space is all a technicality, they go in and out of each other's flats with barely a knock. Home is where they are all safe together.

"Put sheets down." Hardison supports the woozy Hitter who would never admit that he's woozy. The fact that he's not fighting them off and protesting he's just fine means two things- he's really hurt this time, and that he trusts them. He can be less than his best (physically) around his family.

"Okay!" Parker is a blur, to the hall closet and back, dark burgundy sheets unfurling across the couch as Eliot reaches it, covering the expensive but comfy upholstery just in time.

"I'll get his sweats and you get his -" Hardison stops. "You get his clothes off sounds wrong", but it _isn't _wrong in this case. Eliot isn't himself though, and Hardison doesn't want him to have some sort of weird panic when he finds Parker easing his pants off.

"Get the big orange blanket. The ugly one." Parker is still all business, but her hands are giving her away. They gently pull Eliot's hair back before she moves onto the bloodied clothes. Blackened skin around his puffed, swollen eye. Blood spilling freely from his mouth, just a trickle. "Spit it out. The teeth thingy," she gently instructs, trying not to let her voice quiver.

He uses his tongue instead of his hand, weakly pushing it forward. Spit and blood cross her lily-white skin and he feels his old manners surge up and he wants to apologize.

"I'm sorry. We should have been faster. _I_ should have been faster," she whispers, pressing a quick kiss to his forehead, saliva and blood ignored, part of the job, part of this family.

"It's my fault. I didn't even know they had anyone across from the east entrance, El. I'm so sorry, man." Hardison berates himself as he comes back with the first aid kit, a huge, gray-orange fuzzy blanket, and sweatpants.

"Shut up," Eliot tries to shake his head, but that's a bad idea. Startled cries burst softly from black and white faces and hands steady him as the world tilts. "Happens. Had worse."

"I'll get water. And soup. Soup is good, 'nourishing people' food."

"Uh-"

"Don't worry, the soup _you_ made, not the canned stuff we peasants use," Parker cuts his feeble protest short.

"Hey, at least if you still care about what goes in your mouth, you can't be too busted," Hardison's voice is falsely hale and hearty. Eliot grunts instead of nodding. His neck hurts too much. "You wanna do this yourself?" Hardison gestures to Eliot's form with a vague wave that indicates dressing, undressing, and general awkwardness that isn't really awkward between them anymore.

"Can't. Knee's blown. Kidney bruised. Gonna pee blood for two days."

"Oh, man! Oh, sweet Christmas, why d'you gotta be so damn descriptive?" Hardson does a full-body shudder and clutches his man parts protectively. "Sorry, man."

His muffled voice is a snarl. "No. More. Apologies. Just - help with the laces."

* * *

He's sponged down and taped up. The baggy sweats are on. Ice packs are applied to various parts of his anatomy. Parker snuggles up on one side of him with a large mug full of soup, a swirly straw stuck in it. Hardison is on the other side, continually retucking the ugly-ass blanket around Eliot like it will magically do something, and changing the channels on the six televisions.

"It hurts his eye." Parker reaches over gently and takes the clicker.

"Peein' blood and no screens. I know you said no more apologies, man, but_ dang_. That just sucks. We got the money back and I managed to put a worm in their system so deep it's the cyber equivalent of the Marianas Trench. We gonna get _you _something out of this. Oh- oh, remember that time you hired that nurse?"

"Not a real nurse," Parker hisses.

"She was. Licensed. I was a hobby," Eliot gives a weak chuckle.

"We could nurse him."

"Hardison puts on a little white skirt and I'll take out my good eye myself."

"Hey, man, whole sentences. And, for the record, I would rock that skirt. Tell him."

"He has nice legs." Parker shrugs and smiles at her swain. "I didn't mean like that. I meant we'll take care of you. Like you take care of us. Are we- are we doing a good job?"

He has to think. The easy answer is yes. The hard answer is yes and so much more.

He had a brother. Kid to play with. Kid who cried when he went overseas and came back different. He had brothers in green. He missed them. They were bound by something greater than themselves, and Eliot had sullied it. He was clawing his way back to being worthy of those men, starting with one or two buddies at a time.

Hardison and Parker knew the bad man and the good man and the current man. They didn't judge, didn't care. They loved him.

"Doin' good. Yeah."

"I like it. Not you being hurt. Us taking care of you. I - I never got to take care of my brother," Parker whispers. She's still working out emotions. They come out suddenly and she huddles, small and vulnerable in the crook of the couch, temporarily unable to touch another human.

"Had foster brothers. Maybe real ones, too. Don't know. Lost touch. But never gonna lose touch with you." He looks at Eliot, then Parker, voice steady but tight with emotion. "'Cause ya'll my people. You my brother and you- you, my girl." Hardison is always able to express the tricky emotions, he has the gift of gab.

For once, Eliot doesn't mind that he can't return said gift.

"Family," Parker breathes out shakily and reinserts herself alongside Eliot.

"That's right," Hardison clasps her hand and then settles back, making the supreme sacrifice of ignoring all tech and banning all screens.

Eliot hurts like hell. And feels so good. Warmth sinks over his aching limbs and throbbing head. "My family," he mumbles to the bodies against his that aren't hurting, that aren't seducing. Those are the only two touches he was used to during the darkest period of his life. These touches are different. They come from the ones who stick with him, who show up, who keep him fighting, who keep him happy to be living.

His hands are stiff and swollen from so many punches thrown and landed. One bruised finger hooks over Parker's. One fist out to connect with Hardison's. All connected, all safe.

He falls asleep, smiling crookedly.

"He's on my wrist. My hand is gonna go numb," Hardison whispers conversationally.

"He's on my whole arm. It's _already_ numb. He's surprisingly hefty for a short person," Parker muses.

"We could move him," Hardison says reluctantly.

"Or, we could be a little bit numb and sit here and watch over him. The way he watches over us," she whispers in reply.

He smiles. He knew what her answer would be. She yawns and her head droops. Yawns are contagious, and before he can help it, he's nodding, too. "Night, Beautiful." She mutters something in reply, something sweet and snarky, half-asleep. "Night, Bro," he whispers.

It's hard to tell, with the puffing and the bruising, but he swears Eliot's grin just widened.

* * *

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed, I hope you check out my other _Leverage_ works as well as my recently published romance, Searching Hearts by M. Culler. It's free with Kindle Unlimited, and cheap if not ;)


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